Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Signing of the Maastricht Treaty, February 7, 1992. The European Union finds itself in the midst of an identity crisis these days. Economic growth is limping along, the British want out, and Euroskepticism is gaining ground. Perhaps the 25th anniversary of the Maastricht Treaty will help the EU regain its mojo. What the twelve members of the “European Economic Community” (EEC) committed themselves to a quarter century ago was remarkable. They weren’t content with having a common economic market. They wanted deeper economic, legal, and political integration. In advancing this “European Project,” Maastricht called for enhancing greater economic cooperation, developing a unified European foreign policy, and generating common judicial policies. The experiment with deeper integration worked—for a time. The EU grew to twenty-eight member countries, created the euro, and had serious people talking about how Europe would run the twenty-first century. Then came the Great Recession. Seven years of tough economic times have exposed deep divisions across the continent about the European Project. The EU’s fans say that its past stumbles have always led to more and deeper integration. Perhaps. But sometimes past performance is a poor indicator of future behavior.

One Hundred Fiftieth Anniversary of the Alaska Purchase, March 30, 1867. Yes, there once was a time when the U.S. Senate acted quickly. Case in point, the Alaska Purchase. In the early 1860s a cash-strapped Tsar Alexander II feared Russia might not be able to defend its claim to its distant colony in Alaska. So he decided to turn a lemon into lemonade by selling the territory to the United States. The American Civil War put the effort on hold, but talks resumed in 1867. In rapid fire negotiations that culminated in an all-night bargaining session on March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to pay $7.2 million—or a little more than two cents per acre—for the Russian colony. Folklore has it that Americans derided the deal as “Seward’s folly” and “Seward’s icebox.” In fact, it was quite popular. The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved the deal ten days after it was signed. Just like that, the United States was one-fifth larger. Alaska was an afterthought for most Americans until the “Klondike Goldrush” of 1897 inspired over 30,000 settlers to head northwest. In 1912, Alaska was formally made a territory of the United States. On January 3, 1959, it became the 49th state.

Fiftieth Anniversary of the Six-Day War, June 5-10, 1967. Wars don’t need to last long to have lasting consequences. Take for example the Six-Day War. In mid-May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser mobilized Egyptian troops along the Israeli border after Soviet officials told him, incorrectly, that Israel was poised to attack Syria. Over the next week, Nasser evicted a UN peacekeeping force that had been in Gaza and the Sinai since the 1956 Suez War to provide a buffer between Egyptian and Israeli forces. He then took the step that Israel had said it would consider an act of war: he closed the Straits of Tiran, thereby cutting off Israel’s only access to the Red Sea. The Israelis were good to their word. At 7:45 a.m. on June 5, they launched Operation Focus, a series of devastating airstrikes against Egyptian airfields. Syrian and Jordanian forces immediately joined the fighting. Although numerically outnumbered, the Israelis quickly routed all three Arab militaries. On June 11, a UN-brokered ceasefire took effect. In just six days, Israel doubled the territory under its control, gaining the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and most important, East Jerusalem. Fifty years later, the results of the Six-Day War still reverberate in the Middle East.

Sesquicentennial of the Creation of the Dominion of Canada, July 1, 1867. The law of unintended consequences applies to countries as well as to people. When the United States expanded to the west, it unknowingly helped create Canada. For decades after the American colonists threw off British rule, Canada was a collection of British provinces divided by ethno-linguistic, religious, and political differences. By the 1860s, however, most provincial leaders had come to realize that a confederation would serve their economic and political interests. In the latter case, it would help deter an expansionist United States from turning its sights northward. The “Fathers of the Confederation” ironed out their final differences at the London Conference of 1866, generating what became the British North America Act. It created the “Dominion of Canada” as of July 1, 1867 with a political system that divided power between the central government and the provincial governments of Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. (Prince Edward Island declined to join the confederation until 1873; Newfoundland and Labrador held out until 1949.) The act, however, did not grant Canada independence. Britain still had ultimate legislative and judicial say, and it retained executive authority through the position of Governor-General. Canada would not gain formal legislative independence from Britain until 1931 or complete independence until 1982. Canadians, nonetheless, celebrate July 1 as their national day of independence. O Canada!

Fiftieth Anniversary of the Start of the Biafran War, July 6, 1967. Nigeria, a country just slightly larger than Texas, is home to more than 250 ethnic groups. Hostility among its three most populous ethnic groups helped fuel one of the deadliest conflicts in the second half of the twentieth century, the Biafran or Nigerian Civil War. In January 1966, Igbo officers tried to overthrow Nigeria’s first democratically elected government. Although the coup largely failed, soldiers from the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba ethnic groups launched a counter-coup in July. That triggered pogroms in Northern Nigeria against the Igbo minority, forcing them to flee to their ancestral lands in southeastern Nigeria. On May 30, 1967, their leader, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, proclaimed the independence of an Igbo-dominated Republic of Biafra. But Nigeria would not let Biafra go peacefully. Five weeks later, on July 6, 1967, with the support of Britain and the Soviet Union, the Nigerian military invaded the new republic. They soon wrested control of the oil fields that the new government depended on to finance food imports. Unable to grow enough food to feed its people, Biafra was devastated by a catastrophic famine. More than one million people died. In January 1970, the Nigerian forces captured the Biafran capital of Owerri, ending the war. The Biafran War had one positive note: it led to the founding of Doctors Without Borders.

Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943. Ask an American to name the most consequential battle of World War II and you are likely to hear D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, or Iwo Jima. But the most consequential, and certainly the bloodiest World War II battle was the Battle of Stalingrad. In July 1942, Germany had Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic republics firmly under its control. But it desperately needed oil to keep its economy and military running. Hitler’s solution to his predicament was to attack oil-rich areas in the southern Soviet Union. At first, Stalingrad (known today as Volgograd) was a subsidiary objective, with one German general saying it is “no more than a name on a map to us.” But it soon became the main focus. The fighting initially went well for the Germans. They reached the city’s center by late September. But their advance stalled amid ferocious house-to-house fighting. Then on November 19, Soviet troops led by the General Georgi Zhukov and acting on Stalin’s directive to “not [take] one step back” launched Operation Uranus. They encircled the Germans and cut off their supply lines. Hitler ordered his troops to fight to the last man. But in February 1943, with their supplies and will exhausted, they surrendered. With an estimated two million people killed, the battle was a turning point in the war. The German military never again won a significant battle in the East. Volgograd commemorates the battle by renaming itself “Stalingrad” several times a year.

Quincentennial of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, October 31, 1517. Fifth century theologian St. Augustine of Hippo profoundly shaped Catholic doctrine. More than a thousand years later an Augustinian monk challenged that doctrine and triggered the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther had been an obscure theologian teaching at various universities in central Germany. Then on October 31, 1517 the thirty-four year old defiantly nailed his “95 Theses” to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church denouncing the Catholic practice of selling “indulgences” to wipe away sins. That act—and his twin contentions that the Bible is the primary source of all religious doctrine and that only faith, not deeds, can lead to salvation—made him one of Western history’s most consequential figures. Germans angered by what they saw as the Catholic Church’s excesses rallied to Luther’s side, prompting Pope Leo X to issue a “papal bull” condemning his writings. When Luther refused to recant his beliefs before a gathering of secular authorities at the Diet of Worms in 1521, Pope Leo excommunicated him and forbade anyone from possessing or reading his writings. That edict was to no avail. Luther’s defiance inspired dozens of reformation movements throughout Europe. The continent would endure more than a century of religious conflicts until the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.

Centennial of the Balfour Declaration, November 2, 1917. The letter that British Foreign Minister Arthur James Balfour wrote to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild on November 2, 1917 was no casual thing. It borrowed language that Rothschild himself had supplied months earlier and that Balfour and colleagues had reworked. Why so much effort for a letter that ran just about 125 words? Balfour and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George hoped in good part to notch a much-needed public relations victory. Britain was locked alongside France in a grinding stalemate against Germany. The effort to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war had failed at Gallipoli, and Russia looked ready to bow out of the war. By writing to Rothschild, a leading member of the Jewish community in Britain, with the promise to support the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” they hoped to rally Jewish communities, especially those in Russia and the United States, to the Allied cause. The Balfour Declaration never quite had that effect. By the time it became public a week later, the Bolsheviks had taken power in Russia and sued for peace. But the declaration helped publicize, legitimate, and advance the cause of Zionism. Following the end of World War I, the League of Nations gave Britain administration over Palestine in part to implement the declaration’s promise, and Jewish migration to Palestine increased dramatically. The British government soon learned that the promises it made about a Jewish homeland conflicted with its wartime promises to Arab leaders.

Other significant historical anniversaries in 2017. April 21 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the overthrow of the Greek monarchy. April 28 is the bicentennial of the signing of the Rush-Bagot Treaty. May 29 marks the centennial of the birth of John F. Kennedy. June 4 is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Midway. August 26 marks the bicentennial of the University of Michigan, the official favorite university of The Water’s Edge. September 14 is the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. October 1 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Che Guevara. November 22, 1967 marks the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which demanded that Israel withdraw from territories it occupied during the Six-Day War. December 27 is the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

I sat down yesterday with my colleague Edward “Ted” Alden to discuss what Donald Trump’s election means for U.S. trade policy. We discussed how President-elect Trump might reorient U.S. trade policy, the likely demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, how America’s trade partners might respond to a more muscular U.S. trade policy, and the economic benefits of retraining and apprenticeship programs, among other topics.

]]>http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2016/11/11/facebook-live-the-president-elect-and-american-foreign-policy/feed/0http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2016/11/11/facebook-live-the-president-elect-and-american-foreign-policy/Remembering Veterans Dayhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jlindsay/~3/a2BQuFCkBno/
http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2016/11/11/remembering-veterans-day/#respondFri, 11 Nov 2016 13:00:49 +0000http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/?p=19343Today is Veterans Day. Americans first celebrated it on November 11, 1919, one year to the day after the end...]]>

Today is Veterans Day. Americans first celebrated it on November 11, 1919, one year to the day after the end of the conflict they knew as the Great War and we (regrettably) know today as World War I. President Woodrow Wilson issued a message proclaiming the first celebration of “Armistice Day.” The holiday was meant to show “gratitude for victory” in World War I and solemn pride “for those that died in our country’s service.” On that day, all business was suspended for two minutes starting at 11 a.m. and parades and public gatherings commemorated the war’s end. The choice of time was deliberate. The agreement ending World War I went into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

Over the years, the practice of celebrating Armistice Day spread and states began making it a legal holiday. Congress followed suit in 1938, declaring that the November 11 holiday was “dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day.’” In 1954, with World War II and the Korean War having greatly expanded the number of Americans who had fought overseas, Congress renamed Armistice Day “Veterans Day.” In a proclamation marking the renamed holiday, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said the change “expanded the significance of the commemoration” by “paying homage to the veterans of all wars.”

You might be wondering why the holiday is spelled “Veterans Day” and not “Veteran’s Day.” The choice is deliberate. The Department Veteran Affairs states that the apostrophe is unnecessary “because it is not a day that ‘belongs’ to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans.”

You might also wonder how Veterans Day differs from Memorial Day other than coming after summer’s end rather than near its start. Veterans Day honors everyone who has served in the U.S. military. Memorial Day pays tribute to those men and women who died in military service.

The price of service in the U.S. military can be high. More than 1.1 million American service members have died during wartime. The Civil War remains the deadliest of America’s wars, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 500,000 to 750,000. World War II is the second deadliest conflict, with 405,000 Americans killed. Nearly 4 million veterans today have a service-connected disability. Indeed, 18 percent of veterans are enrolled in disability programs. That’s up from 9 percent in 2001. In 2012 it was estimated that 45 percent of the veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars had claimed compensation for service-related injuries.

You probably know that the Marine Corps’ motto is Semper Fidelis, or Semper Fi for short. It means “always faithful” in Latin, and it signifies a Marine’s loyalty both to the Corps and to the United States. What you may not know is that Semper Fiwasn’t the Corps’ motto until 1883. During its first century of existence, the Corps had a few unofficial mottos. These included “to the shores of Tripoli,” which commemorates the Marines’ service in the First Barbary War, Fortitudine (meaning “with courage”), and Per Mare, Per Terram (“by sea and by land”), which the Marines borrowed from the British Royal Marines.

The Marine Corps has distinguished itself at some of the most famous battles in U.S. military history: Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Inchon, Chosin Reservoir, and Khe Sanh, among others. Nearly three hundred Marines have been awarded the Medal of Honor for their individual valor. Two Marines, Daniel Daly and Smedley Butler, have been awarded the medal twice. The Marine who received the Medal of Honor most recently was Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter. In 2014 he shielded a fellow Marine by throwing himself in front of a grenade during an attack on a Marine patrol base in Marjah, Helmand province, Afghanistan. Though grievously wounded, Lance Corporal Carpenter survived.

The Marine Corps is the smallest of the four U.S. armed services in the Department of Defense, with roughly 184,000 active-duty personnel, deployed in the Pacific, South America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. To put that in perspective, the U.S. Army is about two and a half times larger with roughly 475,000 troops. But compared to most of the world’s militaries the Marine Corps is a giant. Countries that have armies smaller than the U.S. Marine Corps include France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan.

Sinek, Simon. Leaders Eat Last(2014). In researching his book, Sinek asked Lt. Gen. George Flynn why the Marine Corps is the best. He replied that it is because our officers eat last. Sinek visited Quantico and observed the most junior Marines eating first and the most senior Marines taking their place at the back of the line. What he found symbolic in the chow hall defines Marine Corps culture. The price of leadership in the Corps is self-interest.

Ricks, Thomas. Making the Corps(1998). Ricks visited boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, to learn how old values are stripped away and new Marine Corps values are instilled. The author follows sixty-three recruits from their hometowns to Parris Island, through boot camp, and into their first year as Marines. As three drill instructors forge and sharpen a group of young men, a larger picture of the growing gulf that divides the military from the rest of America emerges.

I sat down yesterday with my colleague Anya Schmemann, CFR’s communications director, to review some foreign policy events in the news. We discussed the British High Court’s ruling that the British Parliament must vote on whether Britain should leave the European Union, Turkish President Erdogan’s wide-ranging crackdown on the media and Kurdish political opposition, and the fallout from the political scandal that has engulfed South Korean President Park Geun-Hye’s presidency, among other topics.

Last week, I sat down with my colleague Adam Segal, CFR’s director of digital and cyberspace policy, to discuss the recent denial of service attacks on popular websites like Netflix and Twitter, the vulnerability of the U.S. presidential election to hacking, and the effectiveness of deterrence in cyberspace, among other topics.

On Monday, I sat down with my colleague Anya Schmemann, CFR’s communications director, to review some foreign policy events in the news. We discussed the Iraqi bid to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, Rodrigo Duterte’s desire to distance the Philippines economically and militarily from the United States, and the growing crisis in Venezuela, among other topics.

I asked Col. Brian R. Bruckbauer, an air force officer spending a year as a visiting military fellow in CFR’s David Rockefeller Studies Program, to recommend some reading for people hoping to learn more about the air force. Here are Col. Bruckbauer’s great suggestions and commentary:

Air Force Future Operating Concept (2015). In 2035, Air Force forces will leverage operational agility as a way to adapt swiftly to any situation or enemy action. Operational agility is the ability to rapidly generate—and shift among—multiple solutions for a given challenge, and forms a basis for examination, experimentation, and capability development planning for building the Air Force of the future.

Laslie, Brian D. The Air Force Way of War (2015). Laslie examines the revolution in pilot instruction that Red Flag brought about after Vietnam. The program’s new instruction methods were dubbed “realistic,” preparing pilots for real-life situations better than the simple cockpit simulations. Laslie also analyzes how the graduates fared in combat during the 1980s and 1990s in Grenada, Panama, Libya, and Iraq.

Olsen, John A. Air Commanders (2012). From Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, who began his career in World War I, to the recently retired Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, Olsen’s case studies illuminate the character of these airmen, the challenges they confronted in widely disparate armed conflicts, and the solutions that they crafted and implemented.

Hurley, Alfred F. Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power (2006). Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell’s position as the dominant figure in American aviation from 1919 until his court-martial in 1925 has made him the frequent subject of biography and television, but usually the sensational elements have been overemphasized. Hurley portrays Mitchell as a man with a mission and a true pioneer of modern aviation, a man whose ideas about leadership in aerial operations inspire and instruct today’s airmen and women.

Proietti, Matt. At All Costs (2015). On a remote radar outpost during the Vietnam War, a group of Airmen took on a mission shrouded in so much secrecy they had to officially leave the Air Force before reporting for duty. This team ensured bombs hit with precision deep inside enemy territory, and continued the mission until their post was compromised. The ensuing fight and his heroic actions would eventually earn Dick Etchberger the Medal of Honor.

Trest, Warren A. Air Commando One: Heinie Aderholt and America’s Secret Air Wars (2000). Air-dropping agents behind enemy lines in clandestine missions during the Korean War, commanding secret flights into Tibet, participating in plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion; Brig. Gen. Harry C. “Heinie” Aderholt worked at the heart of the U.S. Air Force and CIA special operations. In 1964, he became commander of the famed First Air Commando Wing, and in 1966 and 1967, he and his men set the record for interdicting the flow of enemy trucks over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and North Vietnam.

A tip of the TWE cap to all the men and women who have worn the uniform of the USAF.

]]>http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2016/09/18/the-united-states-air-force-celebrates-its-69th-birthday-today/feed/0http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2016/09/18/the-united-states-air-force-celebrates-its-69th-birthday-today/Remembering Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 Declaration of Vietnam’s Independencehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jlindsay/~3/9GBk5NmAPYY/
http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2016/09/02/remembering-ho-chi-minhs-1945-declaration-of-vietnams-independence/#respondFri, 02 Sep 2016 12:00:52 +0000http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/?p=19262What if? Those two words are easy to ask, whether about our own lives or world history. But the answers...]]>

What if? Those two words are easy to ask, whether about our own lives or world history. But the answers can be haunting—a different choice might have created a better opportunity or prevented a tragedy. Just consider the U.S. response to Ho Chi Minh’s declaration of Vietnam’s independence on September 2, 1945.

Vietnam had been a French colony before World War II started. After France fell to Germany in 1940, Japan seized control of Vietnam, but allowed French officials and troops to administer the country. Seeing an opportunity to liberate Vietnam, Ho made his way to Vietnam from China in early 1941. It was the first time in three decades that he had set foot in his homeland. He had spent thirty years in exile, living in the United States, Britain, France, and Russia among other places.

Ho and his initial few followers operated in primitive conditions in mountainous jungles along Vietnam’s border with China. Local Vietnamese slowly joined his cause. With time, Ho’s forces, known as the Viet Minh, effectively wrested control of several of Vietnam’s northern (and remote) provinces. In March 1945, with the war in Pacific having clearly turned against Japan, Tokyo seized direct control of Vietnam and evicted French troops. The Viet Minh used the resulting confusion to seize even more territory.

The Viet Minh’s success attracted the attention of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA. In March 1945, an OSS officer met with Ho in Kunming, China. The two men quickly struck a deal. The OSS would equip the Viet Minh with radios and some light arms. In return, the Viet Minh would give the OSS intelligence, harass Japanese forces, and try to rescue American pilots shot down over Viet Minh-controlled territory.

A small number of OSS operatives parachuted into northern Vietnam in mid-July 1945 to help train the Viet Minh. This so-called Deer Team found Ho deathly ill, “shaking like a leaf and obviously running a high fever.” They treated him for malaria and dysentery, and he recovered quickly. Looking forward to what would happen after Japan’s defeat, he asked his American guests, “your statesmen make eloquent speeches about . . . self-determination. We are self-determined. Why not help us? Am I any different from . . . your George Washington?”

Ho’s question quickly became relevant when Japan surrendered in mid-August. With the Japanese defeated and French forces long gone, the Viet Minh moved into Hanoi unopposed. It marked the first time Ho had set foot in his country’s biggest city. The streets were draped with Viet Minh flags. Talk of independence was in the air. Ho did not disappoint.

“All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

Ho started by quoting Thomas Jefferson’s famous words for a reason: He desperately wanted U.S. support. Having it would prevent France from trying to reassert control over Vietnam and help keep Vietnam’s powerful neighbor and historical adversary China at bay. Seeking U.S. support seemed a reasonable goal. President Franklin Roosevelt’s opposition to European colonialism was well known. He had insisted that the 1941 Atlantic Charter, issued jointly by the United States and Great Britain, contain a provision stating that both countries respected “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” FDR wanted the United States firmly on the side of anti-colonialism, and liberation movements across the globe took him at his word.

But FDR wasn’t alive to read Ho’s speech. Harry Truman now sat in the Oval Office. Anti-colonization wasn’t his cause. He viewed Southeast Asia through the lens of Europe. His priority was seeing that a successful French government grew out of the ashes of World War II. And the French were clamoring to reclaim their colonies. Sacrificing the interests of an obscure Asian country that hadn’t even merited a U.S. ambassador before World War II was a small price to pay to help secure stability in Europe. When a letter from Ho seeking U.S. support arrived in Washington in September 1945, passed along by a supportive OSS agent, it went unanswered. So did a telegram that arrived in February 1946 with a similar message. By then, French forces had begun returning to Vietnam. War would quickly follow.

Ho’s appeals for U.S. support would not be Washington’s last opportunity to chart a course different from the one it ultimately chose in Vietnam. As the historian Frederik Logevall has shown in his terrific books Embers of War and Choosing War, Truman and his successors passed by many other “off ramps” on the road to the American war in Vietnam. But in retrospect, Ho’s bid for U.S. support in 1945 might have been the best chance to avoid the fighting that would leave more than 58,000 Americans dead, see more than 150,000 wounded, and deeply divide the country.

Would Vietnam have become a loyal American ally and budding democracy had Washington thrown its support behind Ho in late summer 1945? Perhaps. But perhaps not. Yes, Ho was a committed Vietnamese nationalist. He was also a committed communist. He wasn’t shy about ordering the deaths of his political opponents. When the Viet Minh finally defeated the French and won control of North Vietnam in 1954, he instituted policies that led to the executions of thousands of Vietnamese. Even if Ho had shunned violence, a multitude of events or disagreements could have derailed any lasting U.S.-Vietnamese partnership.

So we will never know the answer to the “What if” question on Vietnam. History is lived once. It can’t be replayed. But we can wonder.